Storms 01 - Family Storms

the loss I had suffered. If anything, I’d be more of a curiosity than any other new student would be.
How did this one get here?
they wouldsurely wonder.
She doesn’t belong here. She belongs out there.
    Despite what Mrs. Kepler said, would I look inadequate? Would my voice falter and crack when I was called upon to answer questions aloud? Would I do so badly on tests that I would quickly become the class dunce? And when they all talked about their possessions, their family travels, their rich parents, and brothers and sisters who might be in expensive colleges, fashions and styles, famous people they had met and seen, shows they had gone to and were going to go to, what would I do? What would I say?
    My silence would reveal everything. No matter how well Mrs. March dressed me, despite my being brought to the school in a limousine every day and living in a bigger house than any of them, they would recoil and whisper, “She’s an imposter. She doesn’t belong here. She’s not really one of us.”
    If I thought I had been lonely during my final days at my last school, what did I think I’d be at this one? Lonely would probably be a choice I would take rather than what I would find now. Wouldn’t it have been better, wiser, for Mrs. March to enroll me in an ordinary public school? The other students wouldn’t seem so superior. I’d be more comfortable. Why hadn’t she thought of that?
    And then there was Kiera, waiting and watching, hoping for me to fail. If I did something wrong or did poorly in class, she would pounce on her mother. I could almost hear her claiming, “This is embarrassing, Mother. She’s dragging me down with her. You’re making us the laughingstock of the school. Put her in a public school, at least.”
    I certainly wouldn’t argue about it. I half hoped that was exactly what would happen. Of course, I expected that when any of the other students went to Kiera to ask about me, she would tell them that I was her mother’s charity case, a girl from the streets, homeless, carrying some contagious disease. I could see her whispering in ears, especially the ears of the other girls in my class. She would sabotage me anyway. What chance did I have to succeed? Why even bother to try?
    When I heard her say my name, I thought I was thinking about her so hard that I had imagined it, but she said it again, and I turned around to see her standing there. The sight of her startled me, and I got right to my feet.
    “What do you want?” I asked her.
    “What do I want? I want you to disappear,” she said, and then smirked. “But that’s not going to happen.”
    “So? What do you want?”
    “Chill out,” she said, and walked to the edge of the dock to look down at the rowboats. “I used to take my sister for rides,” she said. “Especially when she first got sick.”
    Was she going to invite me to go for a ride? Maybe to drown me?
    She turned to face me. “I’ve had two sessions with my therapist. Don’t try to look surprised. I know Mother has told you everything.”
    “I’m not surprised that you’re seeing a therapist, but I am surprised that you’re telling me,” I said.
    “It wasn’t my idea.”
    “Whose idea was it?” I asked, expecting her to say it was her mother’s.
    “My therapist’s.”
    “The therapist’s? Why?”
    “It’s part of my therapy, something I have to do.”
    “What is?”
    “Talking to you. Not to get you to forgive me or anything like that,” she added quickly.
    “Why, then?”
    “I told you. It’s part of my therapy. I don’t understand half of it myself, but if I don’t do it …” She took a breath. “If I don’t do it, he says the therapy won’t work. Whatever that means. It could mean I would have to return to court, and then who knows?”
    “What do you want from me?”
    “Nothing. Just … I’ll just talk to you,” she said. She turned to walk away, then stopped and turned back. “Not that many people know about us, about what happened. I mean, what really happened. Just a couple of my very close girlfriends know. I’d like to keep it that way.”
    “What does that mean?”
    “Don’t you understand anything? I mean, keep your mouth shut in school. Just don’t talk about it. No one has to know anything.”
    “They’re going to want to know why I’m here, aren’t they? They’ll ask questions. They’ll see that I come from a different world.”
    “They probably would. That’s why I told Mother how hard this was